And I concur with Burk's evaluations. I'll add two points: 1. The maker of those beloved Winston IM6 blanks was G.Loomis. Though they are a techno-step or two ahead material-wise and they are not green, today's Loomis StreamDance GLX rods offer a lot of what those earlier Morgan IM6 rods had with the addition of reserve power they famously lacked. The 8 1/2'/#4 StreamDance is a heck of a fine rod...even if Moses did not pick it on the Mount. 2. Sam Druckman was not a saltwater fly fisher. After splitting from Winston (his idea) he briefly worked at the other end of town with the boo boys at Sweetgrass making Sweetgrass branded graphite rods. For fun, he built me a prototype #8 bonefish rod. It incorporated several clever bonefish related ideas in titanium reel seat, a blend of guide types and featured Sweetgrass-grade finish work in a class far exceeding anything Winston has done for decades now. I immediately whisked it off to Acklins Island in the southern Bahamas where we all admired its understated, high quality beauty and its super smooth flexing action. And it threw a nice line too as long as there was no wind...no wind at all. A relative absence of low end reserve power precluded this rod from driving line, oh, it could cast line but not accelerate it into a breeze and windless days on the saltwater flats are just not common occurrences.

Like this 9'/#8, a 9'/#5 is often called upon to make a gentle presentation at 35'. Also like an 8-weight, a #5 sometimes is called upon to generated a tight looped 65' presentation across a current to a riser on the far bank. It never occurred to me that a responsive tipped, enjoyable to cast rod like the Zenith or Z-Axis mentioned in Burk's post above were in anyway handicapped by also possessing ample reserve power in their lower tapers. But my BIIx #4 and many of the fist generation Helios rods, among others were handicapped intolerably by not possessing it.